Advertisers and marketers have long searched, with mixed results, for proof that their campaigns are effective. For the interactive industry, integrity in audience measurement is a fundamental necessity. After all, accurate reporting and transparency is critical when planning future media buys, segmenting audiences, and optimizing marketing mixes. However, the methodologies that most media is measured by are seventy years old!

Understanding that advertisers need deeper insights than simply learning ‘how many’ consumers they have reached, Datran Media’s Senior Vice President of Display and GM of the Aperture Product Group, Scott Knoll, recently participated in an educational Webcast that explores today’s measurement landscape across demographics, psychographics, intent to purchase and purchase history.

Saving Agencies Time & Money with Audience Measurement

This informative Webcast presented in conjunction with the Advertising Research Foundation addressed:

-Strategies and solutions focused on campaign optimization and monetization
-Network segmentation and how to avoiding wasted impressions
-Audience validation at the campaign level
-Illustrated case study

This valuable Webcast in now available to view at your leisure and is sure to help you answer questions you have around today’s digital measurement methodologies and what works best for you.

Download the full Aperture presentation with audio.

Download the PDF of the Aperture presentation.

Datran Media’s 3rd Annual Marketing & Media survey has been included in an Effectiveness of the Internet analysis for MindShare Paris that will be commercialized in the French market in June. The study, which asked leading marketers to address their toughest challenges in this increasingly difficult economy, was highlighted by several US research companies including eMarketer when it was published earlier this year. Now, insights from over 3,000 industry executives will be shared with their peers overseas. You can always read the results on Datran Media's Web site.

If the French can give us the Statue of Liberty, the least we can do is share Datran Media's 3rd annual survey results with them.

Datran Media's deliverability consulting team wants to make sure email marekters are aware of common spam traps, and how sending to a trap address can have an adverse effect on your email deliverability.

A spam trap is an email address that ISPs and other organizations use to monitor unsolicited email messages. In other words, a spam trap address captures all outside email communications that the address never subscribed to; hence the term "spam trap."

Senders can prevent mailing to spam trap addresses by isolating inactive recipients from their mailing lists. For example, you can create a simple query that targets recipients that subscribed to your mailing list over 6 months ago, and that have never opened a message. In addition, implementing a double opt-in subscription method can help ensure that your mailing lists contains only active recipients and not addresses refurbished by the ISPs for spam trap purposes.

Don't fall into the spam trap! If you'd like to learn more about spam trap addresses and spam trap prevention, please contact Datran Media's deliverability consulting team.

Are we starting to witness a few bright spots amidst the economic darkness? According to a report by Forrester Research and Shop.org, US online retail sales increased an average of 11 percent in the first three months of 2009. That is certainly a welcomed surprise after reading estimate after estimate forecasting plummeting sales. This is not to say things are suddenly hunky dory, but certainly gives marketers some hope that things are beginning to get a little better. The study was conducted with 80 companies and 58 percent reported seeing increased online sales compared with the same quarter last year.

Forrester is also optimistic about the future of online. During a recent presentation, Vice President and Principal Analyst Shar VanBoskirk predicted interactive online advertising (display, email, mobile, search, and social media) will experience a 17 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), totaling almost $55 billion in spending over the next seven years. Overall, online advertising spend is predicted to grow an estimated 10 percent - from 9 percent of all ad spending in 2008 to 19 percent in 2014.

Despite the recession, online advertising continues to grow. According to eMarketer analysts, marketers are spending more on Internet ads, while spending less on advertising in other media, such as newspapers, radio and magazines.

The eMarketer report predicts that the online share of ad dollars will continue to grow, rising from nearly 10% this year to slightly more than 15% in 2013.

Again, its all about the cost-effective nature of the medium coupled with the ability to not only target who you want to reach but to measure your actual results and optimize future campaigns based on that data. "Marketers can more readily measure the results of Internet advertising than with most traditional media," said David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, US Advertising Spending: The New Reality. "This produces more-efficient advertising and higher ROI, which in turn pushes traditional media to compete with lower pricing."

Delivery to the inbox for most Internet service providers (ISPs) is primarily based on user feedback and your reputation as a sender. ISPs attempt to deliver messages their members want and reject those their members don't want – if they do a poor job of either, members stop using their service. This task becomes increasingly difficult for ISPs when considering mail from senders from which they have never seen email traffic. A common example of this is when a client is switching IPs or starting a new program using new IPs. Even though you may have established a positive reputation based on the previous sending IPs, the new IPs from the perspective of an ISP have no established sending history. It then becomes the sender's responsibility to build a positive reputation.

Almost all ISPs determine acceptance of a message and place in the inbox or bulk folder based on what their members tell them about messages from a specific sender. Typically, feedback or complaints about a message are received by the ISPs by a "report spam" button or submission of a message directly to the ISP's postmaster team. This feedback is used to establish a sender reputation on an IP basis and sometimes on a domain basis, as well. The key to consistent delivery is to create a relationship with members using regular messaging to all members while keeping complaint rates low so that a positive sender reputation can be created. There are many best practices recommended to enjoy consistent deliverability. For more information about your delivarbility, contact us today.

Earlier this week MarketingVOX reported on the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s release of its online advertising spending numbers for 2008, stating “revenues in the US remain strong, with Q408 revenues hitting $6.1 billion, and revenues for the year topping $23 billion.” While these figures resulted in the fifth consecutive year of record results, eMarketer released its own online spending forecast and was less optimistic about the state of online marketing. eMarketer points out that “online advertising growth was cut in half last year. US online advertising revenues grew only 11% in 2008 to $23.4 billion—the slowest rate of growth since 2002.” As a result eMarketer projects that in 2009 online ad spending will reach only $24.5 billion.

While these two articles offer consistent statistical information, each one is presented in completely different lights. MarketingVOX clearly tries to put a positive spin on the results - noting the record performance in ’08, while eMarketer focuses on the declining growth rate of online in the future.

So what is your take on the state of online? Join the conversation on twitter.

A recent study of UK Internet users revealed that more than half paid attention to ads when they were relevant to their interests. Despite focusing on consumers across the Atlantic, the results can be applied to advertisers worldwide – start being relevant or you will be ignored.

In light of recent economic conditions, it was a bit surprising to discover relevance was even more important to Internet users than ads that offered huge discounts. But it makes total sense; if someone is presented money off a product that has absolutely no relevance to them, they are going to ignore it no matter how steep the discount. I recently saw an ad on a site I frequent that offered 25% off an organic natural health shake of some sort. Not only have I never once presented myself as someone who would eat organic, the site I was on had absolutely nothing to do with healthy living. So while that ad may have certainly been relevant to someone, it wasn’t to me. So what can advertisers do o ensure they are relevant? It’s all about better targeting.

Leveraging advanced targeting data like demographics and consumer behavior may help put that same organic health drink ad in front of someone more likely to drink it, say someone who has expressed interest in diet and health offers. Smarter targeting not only eliminates wasteful media spend, it helps you increase your relevance to customers. You can learn a lot more about targeting by checking out this great article on the topic.

NBC wants its customers to stay tuned to what they are doing and are using email to spread that message. By following Datran Media’s guidelines for creating engaging email messages that follow industry best practices, NBC is ensuring their messages are reaching the inbox with clear and informative content and not being tuned out. Passing it forward, NBC is also sharing the guidelines with their sales teams and prospective advertisers – making something not widely understood (email creation and deliverability best practices) easy to adopt and allowing advertisers to focus on the needs of their audience instead of worrying about whether or not their messages are rendering correctly.

“Internally, Datran Media’s HTML content creation and delivery best practices helped us to optimize NBC’s marketing communications for maximum reach and response,” said NBC's Rajan Arora. “We also shared Datran Media’s best practices with our sales teams and prospective advertisers. This allowed us to streamline monetization of our advertising inventory by making it simple for our advertisers to conform to standards in support of their reach and conversion goals.”

If you are currently sending your own email messages with HTML markup there are three major concerns to bear in mind:
· Rendering problems - markup and images rendering improperly
· Content Filtering - bulk or spam filtering based on copy or markup characteristics
· Email file size or image file size - poor results based on slow load time for recipients

If you'd like to learn more, Datran Media has penned a very helpful whitepaper full of common HTML Best Practices.

A new report from eMarketer estimates that social network advertising alone will rise over 17 percent this year to $2.35 billion, up from $2 billion in 2008. In an economy where we typically hear nothing but talk of slashed spending and decreasing budgets, it is credit to the power of social media and the intensity of its users that this channel actually will witness growth in 2009.

Despite the increased popularity of social media networks like MySpace and Facebook over the past few years, marketers were initially reluctant to dive head first into social media campaigns. However, new tools and platforms have been designed to give marketers the greatest amount of access to social media users. Datran Media has even tested the social media waters by leveraging the father of social media – email. Datran Media’s StormPost lets marketers send messages to users directly in Facebook the same way they would send them an email. So while social media as an advertising platform is still young, there is certainly a lot of promise in its ability to drive ROI. According to Datran Media’s own survey of marketing executives, almost 73 percent plan to use social media advertising in 2009; with half claiming it is an effective advertising channel.

If you’d like to learn more about using StormPost to reach Facebook users, call us at 888-494-4ROI or send us an email at sales@datranmedia.com